Customer Reviews

Belkin F5D8013 N Wireless Notebook Card

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I purchased this card along with the Belkin Wireless N Router. The installation and setup were easy, and the documentation is crystal clear. The card and router are operating very well. I am getting speeds of 72 Mbps at close range, and 55 Mbps at the other end of the house. The software that comes with the card and router makes it easy to understand and monitor your network. Highly recommended.

Card lasted about 3 years, during which time it worked well. Installation as I recall was simple enough, and you are offered the option for proprietary program to handle wireless networking, or let it default to Wnidows. I tried both options and both went fine.

It connected reasonably well with Linksys and Apple routers. Interestingly, the worst connection was with a matching Belkin N router, but that was the junk router's fault.

No real problems with this card until it died unexpectedly.

I couldn't get the Belkin F5D8013 N wireless card installed on my IBM T22. The second I inserted the card to the laptop during installation, the laptop will freeze. It will unfreeze if I remove the card. I am using the latest driver from the Belkin web site. I observed the same problem on a different HP laptop. Either the card is defective or the driver is not compatible w/ my version of Window XP (32 bit).

I bought 2 of these since both of my Compaq Evo laptops have 802.11b and I wanted to take advantage of my Belkin "N" router. The performance improvement was immediately noticeable. My concern was going to be the range because the multi-port cards on the Evo's have amazing range and I didn't want to give that up. I was very pleased with the range these cards provide. My house is about 3500 sq ft and I have no problem getting an "Excellent" signal everywhere. Even at the far end of my yard I still get "Very Good". One of the Evo's is running Windows 7 and it was plug 'n' Play. The other Evo is running Windows XP and I downloaded and installed the latest driver. One thing I like is that when you run the setup from the disc, it only installs the driver and nothing else.

My only negative is that this card sticks out of the card slot quite far. I guess that's how it maintains excellent range though.

They must be clearing these out because at this price these cards are a steal.

I just purchased one of these Belkin N cards for my wife's laptop, replacing an older Motorola G PCMCIA card which in turn took over from the built-in G WiFi adapter. For once I followed the install instructions (let the installer load all the drivers then plug in the card when told to), it worked first time and worked very well.

My wife was constantly complaining that she could not get a consistent connection, she had to move around and finally ended up at the kitchen table where she got a fairly reliable but slow connection. Now the Belkin card gives her a 144 Mbps connection in a comfortable armchair by the fire. Response time is now very good indeed.

I have always regarded Belkin products with suspicion having read many less than positive reviews but this device may change my views. Those who pan the device when most others have positive reviews should consider the words of Cassius when he said to his friend Brutus "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in our selves, that we are underlings"

This is advertised as "N" wifi but it is NOT.

When checked on the spectrum analyzer, I only saw radio frequency in the 2.4Ghz range and not 5.8Ghz range(N wifi). I suspect this card may use the 2.4Ghz version of "N" but not the higher bandwidth of 5.8Ghz.

Get the Cisco-Linksys WPC600N, this model broadcast in the 5.8Ghz.

CD install offered NO 'Standard Windows Set-Up' Option; hence, NO "Wireless Zero Configuration Wizard Window appeared. Fortunately, Belkin site offers WINXP Instructions. [...]

My System is WINXP SP3 RAM 768MB prior NIC was a Linksys G Card and this is a Belkin N Card. Do I notice a difference in speed? Not really. But since I did an online speed test & results showed 1/3 better than the G Card, I guess it's faster. But Not a WOW faster.

Would I recommend this upgrade from Your existing G Card. No, don't bother.

This was very easy to set up. I do not notice a significant increase in speed or signal strength with the Belkin N card versus the B/G, but there is a little, and I have no way of knowing to what degree my results are affected by the router versus the card (Belkin does recommend you use a Belkin router and I didn't, but how that affects the result I have no clue). I'm certainly not bowled over -- the B/G card was adequate for my purposes before (web and word processing while remotely logged into my office) and this one is as well. It is definitely a little stronger and faster than the B/G, but in my case not a multiple as the N-touters advertise.

Caveat: if my 4 stars is contributing to your urge to buy this, please note that I am satisfied because I was not looking to upgrade, and was not looking to take advantage of Wireless N speed on this laptop. I was using an old Belkin B/G wireless card to connect my 7-year-old HP XP laptop to my wireless home network, and I was fine with it for this machine which I did not use for any demanding purposes. I then upgraded my router from B/G to a cisco valet with Wireless N, and while I didn't know it at the time, this required me to have WPA security on all connected machines in order to take advantage of the router's best features -- but the old B/G card had only WEP. This one has WPA (as probably all modern cards would, I assume), so for twenty bucks and free shipping, I figured I'd keep the old laptop in the loop. If you want this because you want to triple your wireless connection speed for downloads or video or something like that, I have no basis to recommend this card to anyone for that purpose. Someone with more know-how and the desire to figure it out alone or with customer service might get more speed out of this than I have, and if you get this for a decent price it might be worth that effort, but I don't need that and did not try. It solved my problem quickly and cheaply, and it does what I expected, so I like it.

I bought three of these, and two out of three worked perfectly right out of the box. The third did not, and with the other cards around I was able to test and verify that it was indeed some kind of problem with the card--it wouldn't connect for anything. Given how cheap they were I didn't mind, but if you're having trouble, just keep in mind you might have a bad one (probably why they are so darn cheap!). But the working ones are just great--no problems.

This wireless card worked as advertised. Installed the CD software, plugged it in and...N-speed wireless. Worked without problem with my D-link wireless router. I put this on a 4-year old Sony Laptop and the improvement in speed over its built-in g-wireless card is impressive - at least a 2-3x improvement. I really couldn't watch HD clips previously as they constantly stopped when the buffer ran out - now it's no problem.

I do get some hissing/popping from the PC speakers from time to time that is due to the card. Not overwhelming but noticeable. For the price, this was an easy and very effective upgrade on my old PC.